HULK COMICS OF THE ’70s & ’80s • HULK AS A TEAM PLAYER • INSIDE HULK’S HEAD • ABOMINATION VILLAIN HISTORY • HULK ON TV & MORE! INCREDIBLE HULK IN THE BRONZE AGE! 0 1 1 82658 27762 8 Hulk and Wolverine TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Volume 1, Number 70 February 2014 Celebrating the Best Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! Comics of TM the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Beyond! EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael “Doc Banner” Eury PUBLISHER John “The Leader” Morrow DESIGNER Rich “Rick Jones” Fowlks COVER ARTISTS Herb Trimpe and Gerhard (art from the collection of Charles Costas) COVER DESIGNER Michael “Thunderbolt” Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob “Doc Samson” Smentek BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . .2 DC Comics’ Hulkmania during the summer of ’66 SPECIAL THANKS David T. Allen Brian Heiler FLASHBACK: Hulk Smash: The Incredible Hulk in the 1970s . .3 Mark Arnold Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Creators galore recall the decade of Jim Wilson, Jarella, Wolverine, Hulking out, and more John Bligh Heritage Comics Rich Buckler Auctions BACKSTAGE PASS: The Televised Hulk . .19 Steve Bunche Joe Hollon Series creator Kenneth Johnson certainly isn’t jaded when recalling this TV smash Sal Buscema Tony Isabella EPISODE GUIDE: The Incredible Hulk TV Series . .27 Kurt Busiek Kenneth Johnson Jarrod Buttery Greg Kirkman PRINCE STREET NEWS: TV Hulk . .32 Dewey Cassell David Anthony Kraft Richard Simmons as the Hulk? Karl Heitmueller, Jr. is at it again! John Cimino Alan Kupperberg Chris Claremont Christopher FLASHBACK: All About the Green: Hulk Merchandise in the BACK ISSUE Era . .34 Gerry Conway Larochelle Admit it—you’ve got a Hulk Mego on your shelf… Peter David Larry Lieber Daniel DeAngelo Andy Mangels FLASHBACK: Smashing into Syndication: The Incredible Hulk Newspaper Strip . .37 Ronnie Deen Michael Mantlo Hulk smash Peanuts! When Ol’ Greenskin was read in black-and-white Gerard DiPego Marvel Comics Jo Duffy Bob McLeod WHAT THE--?!: Teen Hulk . .41 Barry Dutter Al Milgrom Hulkmania (the incredible kind) spawned this Crazy magazine satire Steve Englehart Gary M. Miller Chris Franklin Richard Morgan BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: The Abomination: Diary of a Mad Monster . .45 Dr. Sigmund Freud Pamela Mullen Is Emil Blonsky playing with a full deck? Russ Garwood Greg Pak FLASHBACK: Hulk Smash More: The Incredible Hulk in the 1980s . .50 Grand Comic-Book Greg Plonowski Database Dr. Leonard Samson The eras of two longtime Hulk scribes, Bill Mantlo and Peter David Steven Grant Jason Shayer BACKSTAGE PASS: The Incredible Hulk 1982 Animated Series . .64 Glenn Greenberg Roger Stern The Saturday morning success of some amazing friends led to this super-toon Nicholas Guarracino Roy Thomas Larry Hama Herb Trimpe FLASHBACK: Teaming Up with the Hulk . .67 Ed Hannigan Timothy Tuohy The Hulk as a “team player” in The Defenders and Marvel Team-Up Zaki Hasan Len Wein OFF MY CHEST: Three Men and a Little Psyche . .72 trade paperback published by Fireside. Art by Bob Larkin. Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. If you’re viewing a Digital How Mantlo, David, and Freud redefined the Incredible Hulk Edition of this publication, BACK TALK . .76 PLEASE READ THIS: Reader feedback on BI #65 and more py g for downloading anywhere exccept our BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, The Incredible Hulk website. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead andd read it, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: and if you decide to keep it, DO THE BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. RIGHT THING and buy a legal ddownload, Email: [email protected]. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface or a printed copy (which entitles you y to the International. 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Our latigid editions should ONLLYY be downloaded at www.twomorrows.comwww.twomorrowss.com Hulk in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1 It’s one of comics’ iconic origins: On a dare, teenager Rick Jones drives onto a military weapons-testing site. Spying the teenager, Dr. Robert Bruce Banner races out, pushes Rick into a trench, but is himself caught in the detonation of the gamma bomb. That evening, as a nearby Geiger counter runs wild, Banner undergoes a strange transformation... DOC BRUCE BANNER, BELTED BY GAMMA RAYS… The Incredible Hulk #1, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, debuted in March 1962, with a May cover date. Besides the Hulk, Bruce Banner, and Rick Jones, this first issue also introduced Betty Ross—the girl whom Banner loved (and vice-versa), and her father—General “Thunderbolt” Ross, who was to become the Hulk’s most implacable adversary. The first incarnation of the Hulk’s title lasted six bimonthly issues. Thereafter, the Hulk joined (and left) the Avengers, and also made guest appearances in Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, and the Giant-Man strip in Tales to Astonish #59 (Sept. 1964). This led to the Hulk’s second ongoing series, becoming that title’s co-feature in TtA #60 (Oct. 1964). With issue #102 (Apr. 1968) the title changed to The Incredible Hulk. Herb Trimpe came on board as penciler with issue #106 (Aug. 1968) by and stayed until issue #193 (Nov. 1975), J a r r o d B u t t e r y missing only two issues in an incredible seven-year run. Asked how he started at Marvel, herb trimpe and on The Incredible Hulk, Trimpe Photo by Luigi Novi recalls, “In October of 1966, I’d just gotten back from Vietnam and had separated from the USAF. A friend of mine from art school days, John Verpoorten, was production chief at Marvel. He recommended me to Stan [Lee], and I worked in the production department for a while, as well as doing some freelance inking on Westerns. After six months or so, Stan popped his head into our cubicle and asked if I wanted to draw The Hulk. ‘Sure,’ said I. No big deal. Not like today.” By 1968, Stan Lee was busy with an ever-expanding Marvel. Did he have time to provide detailed plots for his artists? “No detailed plots,” recalls Trimpe. “In fact, The Great White North Herb Trimpe (and John Romita) rocked the comics world with this iconic cover for Wolverine’s first appearance (excluding his cliffhanger cameo in the preceding issue, that is), The Incredible Hulk #181 (Nov. 1974). We’re thrilled to have Mr. Trimpe’s recreation of that masterpiece gracing this issue’s BI cover—abetted by the kind and talented Gerhard, who “Canada-ized” Herb’s illo. TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Hulk in the Bronze Age Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3 no plots at all. Just a brief conference, and I would a month and asked ourselves what kind of paces compose the plot from our conversation—write we should put Banner and the Hulk through that down what I remembered and come up with 20 month. It usually didn’t take us long to come up Follow the Leader pages of story. Granted, it was mostly Stan’s with an answer.” (right) Trimpe’s cover conversation, but he really knew what he Herb Trimpe found the transition was doing. I think this has proven itself easy: “Roy was extremely easy to work to #123 (Jan. 1970). out over the years.” with. The Stan Lee method of having (left) The new Hulk the artist lay out the story filtered RAMPAGING ROY down to all the other writers at the logo premiered Roy Thomas took over the title time. I am a very good storyteller here on issue #129 almost exactly at the start of the ’70s and the writers very rarely requested (calendrical correctness notwith- changes. Stan favored artists who (July 1970), but “The standing). Thomas’ first full issue, could tell a story, because a comic Incredible” was Incredible Hulk #121 (Nov. 1969), had book is primarily a picture medium. the Hulk facing a new adversary: To be precise, working with writers added later. Original the Glob. Thomas kindly shares the Stan Lee way made the job a his recollections with BACK ISSUE: dream.” Trimpe cover art roy thomas “Stan gave me virtually no directions. In issues #122–123 (Dec. 1969– courtesy of Heritage The first character I made up with Jan. 1970), Reed Richards manages Comics Auctions. Herb was the Glob, using an old Lee name but basically to “cure” Banner. However, due to input from Banner, an updating of the Heap, a character I liked from the the “cure” now enables Banner to control the change TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. 1940s and ’50s. Herb and I just got together once into the Hulk while retaining his own consciousness. Believing his curse ended, Banner renounces the transformations and proposes to Betty. Astonishingly, things don’t go to plan.